1. Field of the Invention
The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to an apparatus and method for compressing transaction data using serial micro-trends.
2. Background of the Invention
With the evolution of the Internet and other e-Business systems, the monitoring of transactions is essential. Additionally, the monitoring of the quantity of transactions that occur is also essential, for example, the number of transactions each minute that are performed at a banking center or the number of hits that a Web site receives each minute. While the transactions are reduced to a specific number per minute, each transaction number or hit number requires memory space and, for Web sites that have numerous hits or form banking centers that process numerous transactions, the memory space required to store the transaction or hit data may be significant. However, when a system has a fixed amount of memory available, businesses are generally left to adding memory to their systems in order to record the data or deleting data that the company may eventually need at a later time. Either action taken by a company may result in a loss of time, money, or even unrecoverable data.